Is New Relic HIPAA Compliant? How to Check (2024 Update)

Last updated: February 2024

New Relic states on their official website that they are a HIPAA compliant Operations software suitable for use in healthcare.

New Relic aids healthcare professionals with its application monitoring and observability platform. It offers features such as real-time performance insights, error tracking, and analytics. With its user-friendly interface and proactive alerts, New Relic enhances application reliability, optimizes patient-facing systems, and improves overall healthcare service delivery.

They state on their website that New Relic is HIPAA compliant which is clearly a positive sign, but the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) legislation states that you can’t stop here and you need to thoroughly vet the vendor.

According to the HIPAA rules for Covered Entities and Business Associates:

'If a covered entity engages a business associate to help it carry out its health care activities and functions, the covered entity must have a written business associate contract or other arrangement with the business associate that establishes specifically what the business associate has been engaged to do and requires the business associate to comply with the Rules’ requirements to protect the privacy and security of protected health information. In addition to these contractual obligations, business associates are directly liable for compliance with certain provisions of the HIPAA Rules.'

Source: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/index.html

Below we provide some general guidelines on how to first quickly screen this vendor for the HIPAA compliance fundamentals, and if all initial checks pass successfully, then to proceed and do your own in-depth audit to ensure that this vendor will qualify as your HIPAA-compliant Business Associate.

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Quick Check on HIPAA Compliance Fundamentals for New Relic

A. Does New Relic claim to be HIPAA compliant?

✅ They communicate they are HIPAA compliant which is a positive sign, as they legally commit from their side using such public statements.

'With New Relic's HIPAA-compliant observability platform, our engineering teams can confidently resolve incidents faster, while ensuring that sensitive, valuable patient data remains uncompromised—all a tremendous value to our organization.'
Source: HIPAA compliance with New Relic

B. Does New Relic sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)?

✅ They state they will sign their standard BAA with covered entities/business associates, which is again a good sign because if they don’t sign a BAA then it’s a deal-breaker for HIPAA compliance.

'New Relic will now sign Business Associate Agreements (BAAs).'
Source: New Relic's Business Associate Agreement (BAA)

C. Does New Relic claim they take measures to keep patient data private & secure?

✅ They publicly outline various of the privacy & security safeguards they have in place, but these can be very broad statements and you need to check the low level details here.

'We are committed to the security of the data you rely on to make more perfect software.'
Source: New Relic's Security Page HIPAA Compliance

Vendor Audit for Checking if New Relic is HIPAA Compliant

There is no one-size-fits-all set of requirements when selecting a 3rd party vendor as one of your HIPAA-compliant Business Associates, but here are some general guidelines:

1. Eligible Plan

First, you need to determine on which plans they offer HIPAA compliance and whether pricing makes sense for you:

They offer HIPAA compliance with the Enterprise plan only.
Source: New Relic's Pricing Page

2. Legal Contracts

Then, you need to carefully review & sign their legal contracts, especially their Business Associate Agreement and Terms of Service (ask them for the latest versions - in some cases, you might need to sign an NDA):

New Relic’s Business Associate Agreement
New Relic's Terms of Service
New Relic's Privacy Policy

3. HIPAA Safeguards

After that, you need to determine if they have implemented appropriate HIPAA safeguards in order to comply with the 3 HIPAA rules:

  • HIPAA Privacy Rule: Ensure patient confidentiality, keep track of disclosures, disclose minimum amount of information, notify individuals of the use of their ePHI etc.
  • HIPAA Security Rule: Implement & maintain administrative, physical & technical safeguards to protect patient ePHI such as having a disaster recovery plan, annual penetration tests etc.
  • HIPAA Breach Notification Rule: Report on data breaches within the required timeframe & to the appropriate regulating body/affected individuals/media, as applicable.

  • In order to make this determination, you can:

  • ask them for any externally-audited security certification they might have (i.e. SOC2 Type 2, HITRUST, ISO 27001 etc)
  • review any publicly-shared security & privacy statements and ask them questions
  • send them a Vendor Security Questionnaire
  • 4. PHI Access

    At the same time, you need to also review their auditing/logging capabilities for all activity related to electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) access.

    5. Re-assessment

    Finally, at least once a year, reassess whether or not the vendor is still in compliance with HIPAA.

    Source 1: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services HIPAA Privacy Rule Guidance Material
    Source 2: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services HIPAA Security Rule Guidance Material

    Final Remarks on New Relic’s HIPAA Compliance Status

    HIPAA compliance has no one-size-fits-all vendor assessment methodology but we have covered here various best practices on how to thoroughly evaluate New Relic for HIPAA compliance, so that they can be eventually trusted to process or store your sensitive patient data.

    Regardless of the above, for all your 3rd party vendors, you need to follow the fundamental HIPAA principle and always disclose to them the 'minimum necessary' information, which means only disclosing the amount of PHI you absolutely have to.

    If you follow the 'minimum necessary' principle and you regularly evaluate your 3rd party vendors for their commitment to the HIPAA standards while having solid Business Associate Agreements with them in place, then you can minimize the risk of a potential HIPAA violation and decrease the probability of a damaging data breach happening in the first place.

    DISCLAIMER:

    The above is provided for informational purposes only and in order to help encourage adoption of security & privacy best practices for handling sensitive patient data. It does NOT constitute legal or healthcare advice in any way. The information presented here has been collected either from publicly available information or through direct email communication with the company, and everyone needs to perform their own independent HIPAA compliance audit before selecting any 3rd party vendor as their Business Associate that will process any type of their Protected Health Information (PHI). Keragon Inc is not liable for any damage or liabilities arising out of or connected in any manner with information found on this page.

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